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A year ago today, Superstorm Sandy struck the northeastern U.S.
The storm destroyed homes — in some cases entire
neighborhoods — and brought unprecedented disruptions to the New York City area's infrastructure, interrupting
transportation, communications, and power delivery. It even
damaged
a Space Shuttle. In the time since, the U.S. hasn't faced a storm with Sandy's
combination of power and placement, but businesses have had some time to rethink how much trust they can put in even
seemingly impregnable data centers and other bulwarks of modernity: a big enough storm can knock down nearly anything.
Today, parts of western Europe are recovering from a major storm as well: more than a dozen people were killed as the
predicted "storm of the century"
hit London, Amsterdam,
and other cities on Sunday and Monday. In Amsterdam, the city's
transportation system took a major hit; some passengers had to shelter in place in stopped subway cars while the storm passed. Are you (or your employer) doing anything
different in the post-Sandy era, when it comes to preparedness to keep people, data, and equipment safe?

Was it really misleading, or did your ability to assume really stoop to that level of ignorance in thinking there are actually lung-breathers here on earth who think a storm is large enough to escape the very atmosphere it thrives in to damage an object in orbit...

Was it really misleading, or did your ability to assume really stoop to that level of ignorance in thinking there are actually lung-breathers here on earth who think a storm is large enough to escape the very atmosphere it thrives in to damage an object in orbit...

These "disasters" aren't. We regularly have flooding (localized, due to rains, not rivers or levees), excessive heat (110+ for weeks straight), and drought. That's normal here, benign, and we're not doing anything differently because of disasters elsewhere, because we're mostly immune from anything other than what passes for a curiosity story on CNN/Fox when we hit 118 in the summer.

What death and destruction do you think "disasters" have wrought in Phoenix? We don't have "disastrous" flooding, drought and heat. It's hot. It floods a little when the monsoon is in town.. Sometimes water is low. Those aren't disasters.

No, it wouldn't. Drought is defined by abnormal lack of water. it can still have catastrophic consequences for say, cattle ranchers, whose business models depend on a very specific distribution of desert flora(really).

Indeed, Superstorm Sandy only affected people in the eastern seaboard. As to do I approach disaster differently? Not since Sandy, since March 12, 2006. [wikipedia.org] Fo or folks down in St Louis it was 1994 when they had a 500 year flood. Folks in Louisiana with Katrina. And what about the folks in Oklahoma, who go through worse than the tornado I was in almost every year? How about Colorado with its fires and floods?

Hell, what about the British RIGHT NOW. I hear they're having some really shitty weather, that people hav

Are you being funny? Central Ohio does get tornadoes.Also, disasters can e man made. To train cars pulling dangerous chemical(Chlorine, etc) move through central Ohio? if so then their should be a plan in case of derailment.

Destructive storms tore through the Ohio Valley Friday producing numerous large and devastating tornadoes and carving a path of destruction that left dozens of people dead.There was a total of 107 tornado reports across 11 states on Friday. At least 39 people were killed by the massive tornado outbreak.

Heavy rainfall, equivalent to two to three monthsworth, fell across the Ohio Valley between March23 and March 27th of 1913. The resulting runoffproduced cataclysmic floods and damages neverbefore seen over such a large area extendingfrom Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania,New York, and later communities along the Mississippi River

Maybe that was just a freak 100 year storm.... but it was 100 years ago.

It's only called "Superstorm Sandy" because of the pathetic response of government and the self-centered hubris of nor-easters. It was just a hurricane; the Southeastern US getting far stronger storms much more often.

You are prepared only for the disasters you expect, and the expectations are different for each region. There is no point to prepare for a blizzard near the equator, and there is no point to prepare for avalanches in Louisiana. The Southeast is better prepared for strong storms, because they have historically happened several times in the Southeast. I guess, the disaster relief plan for a complete freezing of the Mississippi mouth for several months is not very goo

It's only called "Superstorm Sandy" because of the pathetic response of government and the self-centered hubris of nor-easters. It was just a hurricane; the Southeastern US getting far stronger storms much more often.

Yep...wait till a Katrina or Andrew hits your ass and then you can call it a "super" storm.

I feel poorly for the NY/NJ areas that Sandy hit, it was a weak storm, but did damage. I'm torn between feeling sympathetic....but also remembering SO many calls, from people (especially in the NE of th

We need to keep in mind the two huge differences between NYC and New Orleans. Even if Sandy had hit in 2005, NYC would still have fared much better because a) it's above sea level, and b) because the local and state governments are much more competent and less corrupt than the Louisiana equivalents.

For example, two key contributing factors (I'll consider them the biggest factors) to the Katrina deaths were waiting a day before declaring an evacuation of New Orleans. And second, failing to evacuate about

It was a "Superstorm" largely because of its size. It caused damage from Michigan to Nova Scotia to Florida and was the largest such storm ever observed. By the new total energy measurement they're starting to use on storms like this it was the largest ever measured. Here is a quote from Dr. Jeff Masters at the wunderground blog: [wunderground.com]

1) Hurricane Sandy was truly astounding in its size and power. At its peak size, twenty hours before landfall, Sandy had tropical storm-force winds that covered an area nearly one-fifth the area of the contiguous United States. Sandy's area of ocean with twelve-foot seas peaked at 1.4 million square miles--nearly one-half the area of the contiguous United States, or 1% of Earth's total ocean area. Most incredibly, ten hours before landfall (9:30 am EDT October 29), the total energy of Sandy's winds of tropical storm-force and higher peaked at 329 terajoules--the highest value for any Atlantic hurricane since at least 1969, and equivalent to five Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs. At landfall, Sandy's tropical storm-force winds spanned 943 miles of the the U.S. coast. No hurricane on record has been larger. Sandy's huge size prompted high wind warnings to be posted from Chicago to Eastern Maine, and from Michigan's Upper Peninsula to Florida's Lake Okeechobee--an area home to 120 million people. Sandy's winds simultaneously caused damage to buildings on the shores of Lake Michigan at Indiana Dunes National Lake Shore, and toppled power lines in Nova Scotia, Canada--locations 1200 miles apart. Over 130 fatalities were reported and over 8.5 million customers lost power--the second largest weather-related power outage in U.S. history, behind the 10 million that lost power during the Blizzard of 1993. Damage from Sandy is estimated at $65 billion, making it the second most expensive weather-related disaster in world history, behind Hurricane Katrina of 2005.

Beach replenishment from the action of nor'easters is an annual or nearly so thing around here. In fact they generally do more damage than hurricanes. It's one of the the things your beach tag pays for.

I'd happily help the people wiped out by Sandy relocate to safer ground. I'll help them load their belongings into trucks and give them money, too. But if they want to stay I don't think the government should force me to subsidize that decision. It's fundamentally unethical of them to take my money for such futile endeavors; especially when cheerleaders for rebuilding Hello, Governor Christie [politifact.com] are ideologically opposed to spending tax doll

"The problem" would be socialization of costs and privatization of profits.

I pay for the beach rebuild, the people who are rebuilt (who are wealthier than I am) reap the profits, but my neighbors and I can't afford to visit the beaches anyway.Lather, rinse, repeat since the beaches are highly impermanent and might well move five miles inland over the next hundred years.

Not really. Tax dollars aren't available to repair 2nd homes, and the amounts aren't really big enough to repair a high value home.

Second homes are insured under the National Flood Insurance programs, just like first homes. Since that insurance is heavily subsidized, tax payers are paying for rebuilding these homes. Only starting in 2013 did owners of second homes even have to start paying higher premiums than owners of primary residences, but they are still paying way below market rates. Yes, this is a bai

I wonder if anybody is thinking twice [stackoverflow.com] about having a datacenter on the 17th floor of an office building, in a city by the ocean? Unless there is some specific need for you to be close to Wall Street, It's probably a good idea to make sure your servers are hosted where there is minimal likelihood of natural disasters, and also in a place that is easily serviceable from the ground. Although having it on the ground would have likely been worse in some cases, being a lot further inland where flooding is prett

So data centers no close to people. It really does not work, latency is often a huge issue. This means data centers need to be physically close it's a physics issue. Sure if your DC is just say doing offsite backup sure you could put it on the moon. The biggest issue was gen sets / fuel flooding this was from a post 9/11 fire code that stopped them from storing fuel where they traditionally did.

If your solely running in any DC or area you have a serious issue. Certain requirements might necessitate clo

I'm still using a NYC data center for my VoIP termination, because it's the lowest latency to me, but I'm also now prepared to move that termination to another PoP if a superstorm approaches NYC again. Though, frankly we got hit harder here by Irene than most people did by Sandy.

I was even thinking about it this summer - I've been told to expect ever-worsening hurricane seasons and this year was rather disappointing in that regard. I was quite glad to not have to deal with it, of course.

I wonder if anybody is thinking twice [stackoverflow.com] about having a datacenter on the 17th floor of an office building, in a city by the ocean? Unless there is some specific need for you to be close to Wall Street, It's probably a good idea to make sure your servers are hosted where there is minimal likelihood of natural disasters, and also in a place that is easily serviceable from the ground. Although having it on the ground would have likely been worse in some cases, being a lot further inland where flooding is pretty much impossible would be even better.

Depends what that datacenter is for. If you need it for day to day operations in that building, having the datacenter close to the employees that use it probably isn't a terrible idea. Just make sure you have a backup datacenter for the assets you need accessible outside the company (or needed for a skeleton crew to keep the company alive during a disaster)

Because the problem lies above me, with the move towards centralized control of everything. Power wouldn't've been a problem if the system was more decentralized. Same with communications. Cellphones were designed as dependent devices from the beginning, no p2p mode to be found. Same with the data centers. A lot less productivity would've been lost had people taken charge of their data instead of trusting 'the cloud' for everything.

The rest of it is really just a case of shit happens. Most of the time

The week before Halloween on 2011 we had a freak snow storm on the East Coast. It came in the middle of a MILD Fall so the leaves were still green-ish. It was a a lot of heavy snow... so trees and branches went down all over the north-East. New Jersey was without power for a while... my town was without for a week, many longer. No power meant no heat for many, so it was a cold week.

A year later, almost to the week, was Sandy... just before Halloween 2012. Obviously Sandy was a lot worse for the coastal cities because the water crept in and the wind tore up the boardwalk... but further inland it was the same s**t different year. No power or heat for a over a week, loss of many services, etc. This one was a big more wide-spread though, and getting gasoline was a BIG PitA. But otherwise it was the same pain for those more inland.

As an ex-boyscout I try to be ready for these things anyway... I have plenty of flashlights and batteries, canned food, a couple gallons of drinking water, a lighter to start the stove, warm clothes on-hand, etc. I was able to deal with mostly everything fine except the gasoline situation. After a week most of us were running low.

You forgot Hurricane Irene, which came in August 2011 and did more damage in many areas than the freak Halloween snowstorm. A fair chunk of Connecticut was hit pretty hard because of the winds, since foliage was still on the trees in August. Flooding impacted pretty much the entire state of Vermont. The October snow storm was just icing on the cake. Sandy represented the triple-whammy for many in these regions, and the last straw for quite a few.

Yeh, that's true. I forgot to mention that... 2011 was a bad year. Fortunately my town (and the surrounding towns) weren't too bad... only out of power for 2 days. But maybe 10 miles West got slammed pretty hard somehow; some friends and co-workers were without for a week during that one too.

Hint: Many disasters could mean up to a week without food. And said disaster may destroy your hours and not impact your basement, depending on what kind of basement you want.I would recommend getting some extra bean or chili and storing them down there. The bring up a few cans at a time. this way you have a rotation of things you are going to use anyways. Besides, two days without food will make you pretty weak and may compromise decision making.

Earlier this month Atlas struck the Black Hills of South Dakota. 4-8 inches of snow were forecast for the higher elevations (5000+ feet), but here on the foot hills at 3500', we got 31" of snow. It was a wet, heavy snow that snapped power lines and tree limbs. 60+ mph winds made for zero visability and took out a large number of power poles.

Our little datacenter lost utility power Friday evening, and promptly switched to UPS, which had a lifespan of about 2 hours. Power was restored after 85 minutes, but the decision was made to power off all the servers in case we lost power again, with an eye towards starting recovery procedures in a day or two. The data center was restored to full functionality by Sunday noon, even though the businesses didn't re-open until Monday noon.

We have a complete DR plan, so if the outage persisted for another day, we could have resumed operations at a sister site. The key takeaways here were backup validation for off-site replication, lines of communication between Operations and the affected managers, and validated, sequenced shut-down and power-on check-list. I was able to get on-site through the storm thanks to my big 4x4 and coordinate the shutdown and power-on processes. Without being onsite, we would have had some more challenges due to area wide loss of network connectivity.

Earlier this month Atlas struck the Black Hills of South Dakota. 4-8 inches of snow were forecast for the higher elevations (5000+ feet), but here on the foot hills at 3500', we got 31" of snow. It was a wet, heavy snow that snapped power lines and tree limbs. 60+ mph winds made for zero visability and took out a large number of power poles.

Our little datacenter lost utility power Friday evening, and promptly switched to UPS, which had a lifespan of about 2 hours. Power was restored after 85 minutes, but the decision was made to power off all the servers in case we lost power again, with an eye towards starting recovery procedures in a day or two. The data center was restored to full functionality by Sunday noon, even though the businesses didn't re-open until Monday noon.

We have a complete DR plan, so if the outage persisted for another day, we could have resumed operations at a sister site. The key takeaways here were backup validation for off-site replication, lines of communication between Operations and the affected managers, and validated, sequenced shut-down and power-on check-list. I was able to get on-site through the storm thanks to my big 4x4 and coordinate the shutdown and power-on processes. Without being onsite, we would have had some more challenges due to area wide loss of network connectivity.

Let your UPS tell the servers when to shut down when the batteries get low -- you can script any shutdown sequence you need. Then you don't have only 2 hours to drive your big 4x4 through 31 inches of snow and 60mph winds and risk becoming someone that needs to be rescued.

In theory, that's exactly what should happen. In practice, it's a little more problematic as the servers are doing various things and we need to ensure that those processes exit gracefully before the server closes down.

Sandy did not change my view of disasters. I still remain prepared for disaster, and when stuff looks like it is going to happen, I use my brain instead of burying my head in the sand and thinking things like "oh it won't happen to me" or "oh well Government will be there to save me," which is exactly what happened in New York.

The entire city lived in a state of denial leading up to Sandy, and continued to live in that state for a week afterward, even having the nerve to attempt to hold the NYC marathon despite there being people in need of the resources that were being used for it. Marathon organizers had generators, clean water, gasoline, and everything they wanted, while thousands of people all over the city had no power, no water, and no means of transportation out of the city.

SO it's the Mayors fault people weren't prepared?Or was it his fault he didn't forcible take other peoples stuff to reallocate as he saw fit?Or is it his caulk some people want to continue with their lives, but then decided not to do the marathon?OR maybe you are a hater ass?

My disaster shopping lists have been crafting supplies for my GF and stocking up on gas. Mostly because neither of those two things will keep in my home. Crafting supplies get used up and gas goes bad quickly.

Disaster recovery was already part of our operations. When Sandy hit, it took out a couple of branches for a few days, but operations were just DRed over to other geographic areas. We have fiber cuts all the time, and traffic just gets rerouted or DRed to another area.

Pretty much when Sandy hit, everything happened exactly as it was supposed to.

DARPA X-Prize Project, build a multi use robot that can dismantle a Red Tagged home. Not demolish, dismantle. Pile everything up, neatly. Personal items in a pile. Building supplies in another. Because everyone knows what's going to happen When OSH, Lowe's, and Home Depot opens in the morning. Why not make this a War College exercise. And how does one dismantle a home one nail at a time? I hear that Katrina, and Sandy may have some interesting test sites here and there.

I have several customers on long island, and my customers were some of the quickest to recover (they just had to get themselves back online) as all data and POS systems are in the cloud. I keep 3 separate geographic locations of server clusters and a fourth backup at our office. Those IT guys who think data centers / companies are infallible have not been around long enough to see a data center go under financially, or have servers raided because the police don't understand what a virtual server means. M

No. No, I don't view disaster differently, because I choose to live in one of the majority of places in the US that don't tend to get life-threatening disasters.

No, because I don't live in a backfilled coastal flood plain and then cry to FEMA when my McMansion gets washed away.
I don't live in tornado alley. I don't live in earthquake central. I don't live on the downslope side of the Rockies.

Once a century a hurricane will come close enough to tear a few shingles off the roof. Once a decade a blizz

The storm that hit London does not even begin to compare to Sandy or other disasters. I don't know about you guys, but I don't count a storm that mostly doesn't more than inconvenience people (yes, I know, a few people died from having trees fall on them, but c'mon, that's more of a freak accident than anything.) There was a lot of bitching about disrupted commutes- not even entirely disrupted, just made more difficult- but man, I'm of the opinion that disasters require major consequences. If it's just busi

According to various shows and friends, being prepared for the next major storm/earthquake/tsunami/fire/drought/etc. is to have a large gun and ammo cache, an underground bunker, food and water for a year, off-grid energy generation and the willingness to shoot the roaming hoardes of looters, bandits and otherwise famished and unprepared bleeding-heart hippies that will try kill your dog, rape your mother and steal your food.

In the meantime, past experience indicates that 5 days of food and water is plenty

I wonder how much societal collapse could be caused by a storm. Sure, not complete societal collapse, and not national societal collapse, but it seems likely that many parts of a single city's society could collapse if there was a big storm. Maybe in the US, this is much less likely, because the government would send in disaster relief, but look at what happened when Haiti was hit by that earthquake. Had the world not come to their rescue, things could have been much worse, and they were pretty bad anyway. Many cities in less better off nations could be pretty much completely ruined by a large storm.

>> I wonder how much societal collapse could be caused by a storm?
I can answer that for you. Hurricane Katrina caused a lot of death and destruction. Everything fell apart here for a lot of people. The people trapped in the Superdome and Convention Center turned on each other like animals. Society is back to normal now but for a few weeks this place had a total societal breakdown.

Of course. The next, obvious question though is: what is going to bring about societal collapse? And the answers I get to that range from riots to super storms to earthquakes to hyperinflation to asteroid impact to brand new plague. Most of the answers also mysteriously assume that those events are likely enough to warrant shelling out multiple thousands of dollars immediately.

The reality is that we've been through everything short of an asteroid impact, and civilization has not collapsed. Especially not we

Yeah, sometimes things like "disaster recovery" and "security" get a bit out of hand and/or miss the point. You get people really into the idea "If a nuclear bomb hit my office, I could get my operations back up and running from another location immediately, because all my data is immediately synced to a location on the other side of the country." Well yeah, that's great, until you realize the person has confused a "sync" with a "backup", and besides if a nuclear bomb hit your office, you'd have bigger pr

NOLA shouldn't have residential areas below sea level. No reason other than sentiment exists to rebuild them there.

I have the option not to live in areas absolutely guaranteed to get hammered by hurricane storm surge. Not living there is part of my "disaster prep". The US is vast and so are ones choices of domicile.

You are correct regarding standard hurricanes. You expect to pack up and leave, spend 3 nights in a hotel, then come home. Or spend three nights reading books by candle light and boiling your water if you elected to ride the storm out.

Katrina, however, resulted in a large city being mostly abandoned for several months and a large portion of the population that for whatever reason (there are many that we will not debate) decided not to leave happened to also coincide with the large criminal portion of the New Orleans population.

Looters set one of the malls on fire and then shot at the firefighters who responded to put the fire out. They shot at the rescue helicopters... I do not know why these people decided shooting at the national guard was an appropriate response, but they did. The looting really was just as bad as they reported on TV.

These people decided that since the city was mostly abandoned they were justified in setting random parts of the city on fire and stealing things. There were also normal, sane people who stayed behind and enforced law and order in various places. The easiest way to do this was to post a sign that said 'we shoot looters' and then make good on that promise because the only person making sure some asshat didn't come and burn your house down for fun was you.

Normal society works because the sane people vastly out number the nut jobs who like to hurt other people and set things on fire. Sane people also happen to be the type of people who see a cat 5 hurricane heading towards a city below sea level and get the fuck out of town before it hits. When most of the sane people leave, that leaves only the nut jobs who think it's ok to set other people's things on fire and no one to stop them.

Police stop crime because someone is there to report the crime. When no one can report the crime, criminals don't worry about the police.

It would help to get an amateur radio license before hand so you can contact what's left of the authorities to regroup (or just let them know not to shoot you). A CB would work just as well, but you're more likely to get in touch with them on the amateur 2 meter 144 MHz VHF frequencies than the CB 11 meter 27 MHz HF frequencies. 70 centimeter 440 MHz UHF frequencies may also help if you want to link up with others operating FRS/GMRS radios, and a GMRS license will give you the privilege of working the GMR

You are incorrect, uninformed, and perpetuating misinformation. Licensees participating in ARES (amateur radio emergency service) and RACES (radio amateur civil emergency service) drills practice not only how to operate their stations in power blackout situations, they also practice operating frequencies under net control conditions and how to report and relay relevant emergency information in concise, brief messages that won't interfere with any ongoing emergency response efforts. A disaster is the time

I do want to clarify that any radio on any frequency may be used if the threat of human life is clear and present and no other means of communication are available, but it is much better to be able to make contact out with a licensee callsign. It's even better to know how to operate the radio and follow established procedures and protocols of the amateur service so you can be helpful rather than have to get help from someone on the air just to know how to operate the device. That radio is little more than

There is a point to be made there. Being a doomsday prepper after a real disaster would make you more of a target than anything else. Anything more than one or two guns and a few days of supplies would be like hanging up a big sign that said "Come raid here!" And going on a national TV show and bragging about it is probably not the smartest move either.

Its like getting thrown clear of a car wreck when not wearing a seat belt.

Except without the windscreen/vehicles/pedestrians/the ground/buildings/trees impacting your face.. is not wearing your seatbelt seriously considered safer by some people? Give me a seatbelt and airbag to the face over being thrown down a road at 70mph anyday..

Following Bear Grylls examples will get you killed. He is a highly trained stunt man. You'd be better off with Les Stroud's or Ray Mears's stuff. You'd be better off still with a good ebook on knots, and edible plants, and a few weekends out where there is no cell phone coverage.

The best thing for a disaster is a small motorhome or campervan. Not just for bug-out reasons, but the ability to live comfortably for an indefinite amount of time until power and utilities are restored.

Well indefinitely, or until you run out of propane for the heater and stove, fuel for the generator and fresh water.

With Sandy it wasn't so much the rain and wind that the New York/New Jersey area wasn't prepared for, it was the flooding, and power outages that devasted the area. 8-12 foot storm surge knocking buildings off foundations was commonplace. Some homeowners near the ocean are now rebuilding with 15 foot high foundations. Gas stations had gas, but no power for the pumps (no generator backup). Power was mostly back after 2 weeks time, though I saw near fighting over spots on gas lines as people in SUVs waited ho

If something of the dimension of Phailin [wikipedia.org] hits US, it won't hit just one big city. We all live in only one planet, extreme weather will hit every place eventually. And most people don't care about the causes, there is profit still to be made, lets worry about that later.